Oh, the Things This Rum Has Seen!

Doesn’t this image make you thirsty? On Dec. 12 and 13, Christie’s in London is auctioning off 12 bottles of the seriously old rum shown here. It dates to 1780—the oldest bottles of the spirit ever to be auctioned off.

The rum was a chance discovery during a routine 2011 cellar inventory of Harewood House, an estate near Leeds, England. Although the bottles were covered in a thick layer of muck, luckily for rum lovers everywhere, the good folks at Christie’s “painstakingly removed from their ancient cocoons of cobwebs and mould,” cleaned them, and took one for the team by actually trying the stuff.